Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:48:47 -0800
Sandy,
it could be that OAP becomes equally dominated by the big deal,
and the mechanism by which this would happen is 'subscription'.
Particularly research libraries seem to be engaging in big OA deals
with publishers, by agreeing a priori to pay the APC for any given year.
Smaller publishers, possibly, would then need to coordinate (come
together, merge?) to be more attractive to the research libraries, who
are likely to prefer signing a few big deals than negotiating hundreds
of contracts...
OA publishers and OA advocates are likely to disagree with this
hypothesis. Indeed, there is a widespread assumption that OAP is
about market competition and that the APC is a price mechanism that
links price with quality. However, at the moment we only have the
assertion that there is (will be) market competition, numerous illustrations
of OAP income streams, and a first (good) analysis of the OAP landscape
(from the SOAP project). Missing is a first stab at the analysis of
competition in OAP: What does competition look like and what would
constitute a competitive advantage?
At the moment, many publishers are betting that an advantage comes
from starting a megajournal. For megajournals the APC might indeed
signal a competitive market (unless research libraries undercut this by
taking out subscriptions to (some) megajournals).
PLoS is a small publisher, but was well funded and is on the way to
becoming a big publisher. When starting a megajournal, it helps to have
money in the bank. So, if I were a small(er) publisher, I would be looking
at OAP and its opportunities urgently (including OAP for books) because
the field is still relatively open, but once it has consolidated (more), the
barriers to entry will surely rise.
In sum, the concerns Sandy has are valid. The SOAP project found that
a small number of publishers account for much of the funded OAP. Via a
few M&As it is possible that OAP will be dominated by big players, possibly
even the same players that dominate SB.
However, it need not be that way, and the funders of OAP have much
influence on the development. Then again, maybe the funders of OAP
prefer dealing with a few large publishers?
Chris
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Sent: 25 November 2011 01:35
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Subject: Re: Future of the Subscription Model
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From: Sandy Thatcher <
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Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:41:34 -0600
I would ask Chris if he thinks that the benefits of co-existing OA and
SB business models will be of equal benefit to both large and small
publishers. Or will the largest publishers come to dominate OA
publishing just as they have SB publishing? And if the latter is the
case, does the high profit margin realized by the largest publishers
really redound to the overall benefit of the scholarly communication
system, or not? How much will quality drive the system, as opposed to
sheer market power?
Sandy Thatcher
> From: "Armbruster, Chris" <
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> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:20:08 -0800
>
> Joe, Jan,
>
> What is maybe not well understood (yet) is the (potentially strong)
> complementarity between open access and subscription-based publishing
> for a system of scholarly communication in which the published output
> continues to grow substantially (i.e. 3% p.a. because of publish or
> perish, new players/countries, internationalisation, multi-authorship
> etc.). Open access has opened up new sources of revenue. At the same
> time it has a viable business model for the bulk publishing of the
> scientific record, probably at significantly reduced cost. The
> players/ publishers who understand/exploit this new complementarity
> will be the ones that thrive (including a maintained or improved
> profit margin). Of course, this may sound like bad news to some
> advocates of open access as well as of big deal publishing, but from
> the point of view of scholarly communication and the communities this
> is all good news. From here onwards, it is about optimizing the
> synergy (i.e. positive network effects) of OA and SB publishing in the
> interest of digital scholarly communication (i.e.
> authors/readers/clients/customers).
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris